Van Attack In Toronto

[AGBF]

There has been what is being called a van attack in Toronto. It seems to be quite bad. It was carried out at about 1:30 PM today.

Link...

 

[diamondseeker2006]

Horrific. These attacks with trucks and vans just keep happening.sad

 

[lyra]

This is awful. As soon as I saw the news I checked Life 360 to see where my youngest daughter was. I'm so glad that our kids don't mind using the app. My dh is out of town and he also panicked and texted her. This is generally a very safe place to be, even for a big city.

 

[asscherisme]

It is horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. Lyra, I am glad your family is safe.

 

[canuk-gal]

HI:

Oh so SAD. Healing vibes across the miles to the families and witnesses of this tragedy. RIP.

Sharon

 

[missy]

What a nightmare. I’m so sorry and my thoughts and prayers are with all our Canadian PSers and all Canadians. Lyra, I’m relieved your loved ones are safe. Sharon hugs and love across the miles. To all of you.

 

[tkyasx78]

I saw on the news 10 people had passed away and 16 were injured, they caught the murderer right away. In the US 4 innocent people were shot and this morning the killer got bail , so once his dad , who gave him back the guns fronts 200k he will be back on the street. I need a break from the news.

 

[cmd2014]

I am so sad too. I spent yesterday getting in touch with friends in TO to make sure that everyone was safe. It is hard to accept that there are people out there who think that this is a reasonable solution to any kind of problem.

 

[december-fire]

Horrible and heartbreaking.

 

[missy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/world/canada/toronto-van-rampage.html

TORONTO — The man identified as the van driver who traumatized Toronto was a socially troubled computer studies graduate who posted a hostile message toward women on Facebook moments before his deadly rampage, according to accounts by the police and his acquaintances on Tuesday.

The suspect, Alek Minassian, 25, was charged in a Toronto court with 10 counts of first degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder one day after the van rampage along the sidewalk of a busy Toronto street.

The police have said that Mr. Minassian, who lived in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill, intentionally struck the victims in what was likely to count as Canada’s deadliest vehicular assault.

Government officials have said the attack did not appear to be an act of terrorism but have not ruled it out.

The rampage shattered a peaceful Monday afternoon when a white Ryder rental van roared down Yonge Street, a main Toronto thoroughfare, and plowed into pedestrians along a stretch of more than a mile. Ten people were killed by the van, which the police said Mr. Minassian had rented that morning.




Toronto Van Driver Kills at Least 10 People in ‘Pure Carnage’ APRIL 23, 2018

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  ‘Get Down or You’ll Be Shot!’: Videos of Van Driver’s Arrest Captivate Social MediaAPRIL 23, 2018

Detective Sgt. Graham Gibson of the Toronto Police said 14 people were hurt — not 15 as the authorities had earlier reported — with wounds ranging from “scrapes and bruises to terrible injuries.”

Sergeant Gibson declined to specify the genders of the victims. Asked if the driver had been targeting women, he said, “At this stage we have no evidence.”

The driver stopped the van on a sidewalk and engaged in a tense standoff with the police, claiming to be armed and daring officers to shoot him in the head. He surrendered seven minutes after the police received the first emergency call.

While the police did not disclose a motive for the rampage, interviews with former acquaintances of Mr. Minassian, witnesses and others, and his now-deleted Facebook account, portray a troubled young man who harbored resentments toward women, had a penchant for computer programming, served briefly in the military last year, and appeared determined to die.

Former classmates at Thornlea Secondary School in Thornhill, a Toronto suburb, said Mr. Minassian had displayed extreme social awkwardness. But they said he had seemed harmless, had shown no propensity for violence, and that news that he was the attacker had shocked their close-knit high school community.

“He was an odd guy, and hardly mixed with other students,” said Ari Blaff, a former high school classmate who is now a graduate student in international relations at the University of Toronto. “He had several tics and would sometimes grab the top of his shirt and spit on it, meow in the hallways and say, ‘I am afraid of girls.’ It was like a mantra.”

Mr. Minassian did not express strong ideological views or harass women, Mr. Blaff said, but he was isolated and others privately made fun of him.

“He was a loner and had few friends,” Mr. Blaff said.

Josh Kirstein, who took a photography class with Mr. Minassian in high school and works in the mental health field, said Mr. Minassian had difficulty communicating and expressed fear that women could hurt him. Other classmates said he literally ran away when women approached, even female students determined to befriend him.

Photo

Vic Minassian, the father of the suspect, Alek Minassian, attended a court hearing on Tuesday but offered no comment to reporters other than saying he had not spoken with his son.CreditLars Hagberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“He would cower and avoid eye contact when he saw a girl,” Mr. Kirstein said. “He would shut down completely.” Mr. Kirstein added, “I never saw him have a normal conversation.” Classmates said he sometimes joked around with other male students.

Other signs of sympathy for misogyny appeared on Mr. Minassian’s Facebook account.

A posting that Sergeant Gibson said the suspect had made minutes before the rampage praised Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in a May 2014 rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., before shooting himself.

Mr. Rodger had posted a YouTube video describing his rage that women had rejected him and that he was a virgin at age 22.

The Facebook posting by Mr. Minassian praised “incels,” or involuntary celibates, a term used in a Reddit group where men vented frustrations that tipped into misogyny.

“The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” the posting stated. “We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”

Mr. Rodger had referred to men who are successful with women as “Chads” and to the unattainable women who rejected him as “Stacys.” Mr. Rodger had also called himself an “incel.”

Last November, Reddit banned a community dedicated to “incels,” which had 40,000 members, and had included posts lauding the rape of women. Some posts were titled “all women are sluts” and “reasons why women are the embodiment of evil.”

Mr. Minassian’s Facebook account has been suspended, but the company confirmed in an email the authenticity of the posting.


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Mr. Minassian recently graduated from a computer studies program at Seneca College in North York, a Toronto suburb, where he had studied for about seven years.

While he appeared to be skilled at computers, he did not take to military life. The Canadian Department of National Defense said in a statement that Mr. Minassian joined the armed forces on Aug. 23 of last year and quit two months later, after 16 days of basic training.

While Canadian officials were not characterizing the van rampage as terrorism, it raised fears about Toronto’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack. The scene evoked memories of deadly vehicle rampages carried out by extremists in a number of major Western cities in recent years, including New York, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Barcelona and Nice, France.

At the court hearing Tuesday, the judge, Stephen Weisberg, asked Mr. Minassian whether he understood a court order not to contact any survivors. “Yes,” he replied in a clear and loud voice.

He was dressed in a white jumpsuit with his hands cuffed behind his back. Seven uniformed police officers watched over him in the hearing room.

Mr. Minassian was represented at the hearing by a court-appointed lawyer with whom he had an extended, whispered conversation from a prisoners box.

He was being held without bail and the next hearing is on May 10. It is unclear when he will enter a plea.

Witness accounts and amateur cellphone videos that captured the Toronto rampage and the suspect’s arrest depicted a sequence of horrific scenes.

David Alce, a 53-year-old network engineer, was waiting at a traffic light at Yonge Street and Finch Avenue on his way to the park to enjoy a sunny day off when he saw a white van careening across the intersection.

At around 1:20 p.m., Mr. Alce said, his initial disbelief turned to shock and then horror as the speeding van cut through the intersection, mounted the curb and began to swerve and mow people down.

Mr. Alce saw the driver ram four people, he said, and then another four. One woman was thrown several feet into the air. A man was hit midsection before falling. Another was smashed in the head. The van made a roaring sound.

“At first I thought the driver was having a heart attack before I realized what was happening,” Mr. Alce said.

“I watched the car for a good two blocks,” he said. “I didn’t see the driver’s face. There was a loud bang as he hit the curb. There was confusion. Some people tended to the wounded. Others were on their cellphones. One woman was sobbing uncontrollably on the corner.”

Mr. Alce, for his part, went to see whether he could help, rolling over some of the victims to determine whether they were alive, and administering CPR.

Mr. Alce, an Ottawa native, said he moved to Toronto about 20 years ago, drawn by the city’s peaceful atmosphere and lack of crime. He said the attack had destroyed the innocence of a multicultural, humanistic city.

“This is the first time I have seen something this horrific,” he said. “It is a loss of innocence. Toronto is peaceful. That is why I love it here.”

Other Torontonians, still in shock, were adamant that the city would quickly recover. On Tuesday morning, commuters heading to work were hunched over newspapers. “Carnage in Toronto,” said the front-page headline of The Globe and Mail.

As well-wishers continued to gather at an impromptu memorial near the scene of the attack, hazardous material cleanup teams wearing respirators and jumpsuits were using absorbent powder to remove bloodstains from the sidewalk.

Nancy Brooks, 56, who works in human resources for the Ontario government, often jogs through the area where the episode occurred. She said that in Canada, which prides itself on diversity and a spirit of tolerance, it was particularly jarring.

“This is not something that happens here,” she said. “We always think we are insulated from this kind of thing. We like to think we are like Switzerland.”

 

[lyra]

I'm glad that the police officers kept cool heads under the circumstances, and did not shoot/kill him. He will have to answer for this crime hopefully for the rest of his life.